The Pulaski citizen. [volume] (Pulaski, Tenn.) 1866-current, 1887-01-20

berry had taken the place of thorny thickets,
gard ems the place of barrenness, and the
old yooI1ery i'll which he once lived had
given way to a pictured mansion where he
lived IN comfort the rest of his days. And I
tell you if you will come and enlist under the
banner of our Victor Emmanuel, and follow
Him through thick and thin, and fight His
hsttles and endure His sacrifices, you will
fnd after a while that He has changed your
heart from a jungle of thorny skepticisms
into garden all a-bloom with luxuriant joy
that you have never dreamed of. From q
tangled Caprera of sadness into paradise of
God!
do not know how your theological system
went to pieces 1t may be that your parents
started you with only one plank, and you be-
lieve little or nothing. Or they may have
been too rigid and severe in religious
discipline and cracked you over the head
with a psalm book 1t may be that some
partner in business, who was member of an
evangelical church, played on you trick that
disgusted you with religions 1t may be that
you have associates who have talked against
Christianity III your presence until you are
call at sea- and you dwell more on things
that you Go not believe than on things you do
believe You are in ono respect like Lord
Nelson, when a signal was lifted that he
wished to disregard, and he put his sea glass
to his blind eye and said: II really do not see
the signal" o, my hearer, put this field
glass of the Gospel no longer to your blind
eye and say cannot see, but put it to your
other eye, the eye of faith, and you will see
Christ, and He is ali you need to see.
If you can believe nothing else, you GER
tainly believe in vicaiious suffering, for you
see it almost every day in some shape Last
month the steamship Kniclxerbocker of the
Cromwell line, running between New Or
leans and here, was in great storms, and the
captain and crew saw the schooner Mary D.
Cranmer, of Philadelphia, in distress. The
weather cold, the waves mountain high, the first
officer of the steamship and four men put out
in a lifeboat to save the crow of the schooner
and reached the vessel and towed it out of
danger, the wind shifting SO that the schooner
was saved. But the five men of the steamship
coming back, their boat capsized, yet righted
again and came on, the sailors coated with
ice. The boat capsizcd again, and three times
upset and was righted, and line was thrown
the poor fellows, but their hands and arms
were frozen SO they could not grasp it,
and great wave rolled over them, and they
went down never to rise till the sea gives up
its dead. Appreciate that heroism and self
sacrifice of the bravo fellows we all can, and
can we not appreciate the Christ who put out
In more biting cold and into more over
whelming surge to bring us out of infinite
peril into everlasting safety The wave of
human hate rolled over Him from one side,
and the wave of hellish fury rolled over Him
on the other side. Oh, the thickness of the
night and the thunder of the tempest into
which Christ plunged for our rescued
in fbat
beam of the cross. Let all else go and cling
7 to that. Put that under you, and with the
earnestness of a swimmer struggling for his
life put out for shore. There is great warm
fire of welcome already built, and already
many, who were as far out as you are, are
standing in its genial and heavenly glow
The angels of Gods rescue are wading out
into the surf to clutch your hand, and they
know how exhausted you are, and all the re-
deemed prodigals of heaven are on the beach
with new white robes to clothe all those who
come in ON broken pieces of the Ship
My sympathies are for such all the more
be"9use l was naturally skeptical, disposed to
qD-s,ion everything about this life and the
next, and was in danger of being further out
to sea than any of the 276 in the Mediterra-
mean breakers, and was sometimes the an
noyance of my theological professor because
| asked so many questions. But I came in on
plank. l knew Christ was the Saviour of
sinners, and that was sinner, and got
ashore, and l do not propose to go out on that
sea again. have not for thirty minutes dis
cussed the controverted points of theology in
thirty years. And during the rest Of my life
do not propose to discuss them for thirty
seconds.
l would rather, in a mud scow, try to
weather the worst cyclone that ever swept
up from the Caribbean than risk my immor-
tai soul in useless and perilous discussions in
which some of my brethren in the ministry
are indulging. They remind me of com
pany of sailors standing on Ramsgate pier
head, from which the lifeboats are usually
launched, and coolly discussing the different
| style of oar locks and how deep boat ought
| to set in the water, while a hurricane was in
full blast and there are three steamers crowd
ed with passengers going to pieces in the off
| ing. An old tar, the muscles of his face
working with nervous excitement, cries out:
''This is no time to discuss such things Man
the lifeboatl Who will volunteer? Out with
her into the surfl Pull my lads, pull for the
wreck Hal hal Now we have them Lift
them in and lay them down on the bottom
| of the boat. Jack, you try to bring them to.
Put these iannels around their hands and
feet and l will pull for the shore. God help
| mel Therei Laudedl Huzzain When
there are so many struggling in the waves of
| sin and sorrow and wretchedness, let all else
| go but salvation for time and salvation for
| ever.
bethink myself that there are some here
| whose opportunity or whose life is mere
wreck, and they have only small piece left.
You started in your youth with all sails set
and everything promised a grand voyage,
but you have sailed in the wrong direction
or have foundered on rock You have
| only fragment of time left. Then come in
| on that one plank. "Some on broken pieces
of the ship"
You admit you are all broken up, one de-
cade of your life gone by, two decades, three
decades, four decades, half century, per
haps three-quarters of a century gone The
hour hand and the minute hand Of your clock
| of life are almost parallel and soon it will be
| 12 and your day ended. Clear discouraged
are you: 1 admit it is a sad thing to give all
of our lives that are worth anything to sin
and the devil, and then at last to make God a
present of first rate corpse But the past
you cannot recover Get on board that old
Ship you never will. Have you only one
more year left, one more month, one more
| NSths Oiic HlOIc Ney OLc lllOIo HOul~tOmo III
on that. Perhaps if you get to Heaven God
may let you go out on some great mission te
some other world, where you can somewhat
atone for your lack of service in this
From many a deathbed 1 have seen the
hands thrown up in deIloration something
like this: "My life has been wasted. had
good mental faculties and fine social posi-
ton and great opportunity, but through
worldliness and neglect all has gone to waste
save these few remaining hours. I now
accept of Christ, and shall enter HEAVIER
through His mercy; but alas! alas! that wher
/ might have entered the haven of eterna
rest with full cargo, and been greeted by
the waving hands of multitude in whose
salvation had borne blessed part, 1 must
confess now enter the harbor of heaven or
broken pieces of the ship!
! Ex-senator Thurmans wife always lAces
his shoes before he goes out.